Live off the earth
Eat from her bounty
Drink from her *******
Sleep on her skin
Climb up her spine
Drown in her tears
Become lovers of the land
Discover your own stardust
Bleed like a man
Breathe like a child
Cry like an infant
Live
As if this is home.

My tired heart revives
when Fall arrives
and Summer dies.
Yeah, it comes back to life
at least part-way, sometimes.
               So paint me
               red and gold
       and washed-out green
                  in sunset.

The year seeks sleep
                              I'm piling leaves.
A breeze on evening,
                              Autumn flesh.
October's weary, ragged breaths
time out these restless, rustling footsteps.

               I can smell the solemn things
               the dying year would say to me
               if it could force its sibilant wind
                                into shape--
--if it could speak in consonance
to my own alliterative silence
and I could keep beats
               as stresses released:
"Where were we          when water froze
for the first time          in the fast waning warm?"

I seek out the sanguine;
                              I've been too combustible.
                              But I'm finally comfortable
with speaking dead language
with tongue all languid.
                               Let languish
cloying heat and raise bumps
               on the skin of my arm
                       like you did
                   when I was four,
playing alone in the rain in the Langleys' yard.

Held up under heavy arms,
buoyed by cool Autumn breath,
I found a way to quiet alarms in my
                              chest
           when I was 27...

Nothing's ever real red gold
except for in the Fall.
So guild me slow and let me go
               if all you've got
               are Summer arms.

The stars are falling off my ceiling.

I'm paying bills,
Buying college books,
Saving for a car,

And the stars are falling off my ceiling.

My calendar is full
Marked with appointments
And work hours

And the stars are falling off my ceiling.

My friends are getting married,
Having children,
And buying houses,

And the stars are falling off my ceiling.

Like the child
In my heart
Is emaciating,

I'm twenty years old,
And the stars are falling off my ceiling.

she said
not until the streetlights come on
so we laid in her bed
laughing and strong
songs of the future
curb stomped my head

Swallowed the sun
  in attempts to
       feel the fire,
dimly lit universe
   eclipsed neath
    inescapable moons,
horizons were hued of
  brackish tea's
   indifferent sympathy,
as solar systems' fate
      lost in darkly orbits,
  relinquished their balance

poetic fractured retractions
   gnashing night prayers,
scribbling braille,
     written sideways
 dipped amid holy water's retention,
compromising statements
     of disbelief's proclamation
spinning music the color
     of nakedly sick ******, yet
burnished souls keep on ticking
   half past total trade-offs
   in a spoonful of smoky reflections
         sans sugar's acid trip,
anointed of rose red
        ****** false pretenses
dancing off center
       in disillusioned
   pirouettes of pseudo redemption,
whirling out of control on
         staged tapestry's loftiness
surrendered ballet slippers
        in blistered half promises,
as twisted metaphors sprightly
       tuned out spun anomalies
below birds on a rusty wire tweeting
     admissions of blue's cobalt execution,
rendered inky alterations' inquisitions
        'pon pedaled pink fluff profundity,
exhaling paroxysms of engaged poetry
    in vehemently enraged deliverance,
naught one is ever as they seem
  through pigmented film 'neath
    figment's imagined looking glass
           of ingratiated grand delusions

when the checkered flag waves
and the street lights fade
promise me we'll stay the same
and when the roads we've paved
all go astray
promise me nothing inside you has changed